Listen to the Greys’ New Album, ‘If Anything’ (Premiere)

Greys don’t mince words in their Bandcamp profile, merely saying they “are a loud band from Toronto.” They sure are loud, but thankfully there’s more to the story. Named a “Band to Watch” by Stereogumin December 2012, Greys took the summer of 2013 to record its debut full-length album, If Anything, out next week in the U.S. via Carpark Records.

The 11-track, 35-minute record bursts from the gate with “Guy Picciotto,” a 90-second high-wire act named for the D.C. hardcore stalwart in Rites of Spring and Fugazi. “There goes my hero! He lives right down the street,” vocalist-guitarist Shehzaad Jiwani shouts over careening guitars and a thudding bassline.

The next track, “Use Your Delusion,” goes for a Hot Snakes-style aural assault, leading into “Flip Yr Lid,” which slows things down, yet it experiments with an array of noise-punk influences. Jiwani spoke by phone to Speakeasy; the conversation is lightly edited for clarity. Check out the premiere of If Anything below.

Speakeasy: So, obvious first question: Why name a song after Guy Picciotto? And the lyrics “There goes my hero/he plays the same guitar as me”…

Shehzaad Jiwani: It’s not, you know, literally about him, but he’s just a cool dude. The song is about being a kid and seeing a show, and being mesmerized by seeing this person on a stage who’s, in your eyes, defying gravity and being inhuman. You realize: He lives down the street from you, and everything he does you have the ability to do that too. That’s sort of, for lack of a better term, a “punk rock awakening” that every kid has early on. It’s sort of sarcastic: When it came time to name the song, we picked him because he’s the coolest guy around.

Was there any thought, by naming the album If Anything, that you made it a nod toward My Bloody Valentine, whose debut record was titled Isn’t Anything?

That’s a good question, [laughs]. We chose the name because it’s something our group of friends say a lot. It’s sort of an inside joke, but to anyone else it has this ethereal quality to it, like with My Bloody Valentine, who are an influence on how we layer guitars.

The album, to me, captures something that has been missing in a lot of noisier punk music since Hot Snakes broke up [in 2005]. In your press material since the 2011 debut EP, Greys has been name-checking the band’s guitarist, Jon Reis. What sort of influence does he have on you?

The way he even holds the guitar, and strums the guitar, has had an influence on me and Cam [Graham, the band’s second guitarist]. He’s like Jimmy Page to me. It blows my mind to see what he’s doing and how he holds the guitar. On the earlier stuff, we wore that influence a lot more on our sleeve, but at this point it’s sort of part of our larger sound. Justin Trosper, from Unwound, as well has that role for us. It’s just taking that, and incorporating other aspects of guitar rock from people like My Bloody Valentine and Wire. There are a lot of people who influenced our instruments, and we tried to make our own thing on this record.

What was the writing and recording process like? How different was it to put together a full-length record, as opposed to the two EPs you’ve previously released?

It was easy, just longer than the others. It’s not all that difficult to put together a record. We just had more time to play Offspring songs in between takes and annoy Mike [Rocha] and Josh [Korody], who made the record. We got to play a wider array of Green Day and Offspring songs rather than just the hits. [What were you playing to mess around with them?] I don’t know why, but there was a lot of “Come out and Play,” and “The Kids Aren’t All Right.” There were a lot of really lewd 12-bar blues jams we broke into, and we also played “Hunger Strike” by Temple of the Dog just about every day, so there was a lot of that.

Your similar sound, and common city, will lead to inevitable comparisons to METZ. What are your thoughts?

We were hanging out with them just on Saturday. I’m personally flattered we’d get that comparison. It’s certainly inevitable, given we are from the same city and we play a similar style of music. We’re not offended by it at all: A lot of people think we’d sort of chafe under that constant comparison, but that’s how you create a music scene. There’s always a band that does it first, but others come out as well. They’re an amazing band, and they’ve done amazing things for Toronto. If it’s easier for someone to get into our band by comparing them to our band, there are worse bands to compare us to – but we are better looking.